Tips for startups from best-selling author, professor and coach to leaders of new enterprises

Human Resources & People

Thursday, 20 June 2013

That's a question I often get from people contemplating doing a real new enterprise.

Here is my opinion: Regardless of size, industry, ambitions, country and finances, the following is the metaphor best describing the emotions you will feel when doing a startup the first time:

That silly sounding metaphor is very real. Ask any entrepreneur.

It's felt by serial startup leaders also, not just first-timers.

It is part of the emotional rush felt every day by leaders of new enteprises. They enjoy it.

Others are repulsed by it and set out to "fix the startup."

Some attempt to "get this thing under control" and fail miserably.

Others try to apply MBA large corporate lessons and flounder.

Some seek to use heirachy to establish chains of commands and find that falls flat.

Rules and commands and policies are put in place but fade to forgotten status with the next crisis.

Serial entrepreneurs instead embrace the metaphor.

Let the organization shape itself.

Keep people focused on delivering the next big milestone.

Establish loose boundaries that respect individuals while giving general guidelines for behavior.

Encourage innovators, discourage excessive controllers.

WHY?

There is a fundamental reason for this metaphor: You don't know how the startup will turn out!

BOTTOM LINE: Let the bicycle metaphor encourage you as you embark on doing your startup. Yes, it will feel very disturbing at first, but as time progresses, you can get used to it. Its best results come when people are excited about achieving that next big milestone while feeling free to innovate, create and get things done regardless of constraints typically imposed by managers of large corporations. When you can work emotionally this way, you will be well on your way to building an unair competitive advantage.

Tuesday, 04 June 2013

"What should I most focus my efforts on when executing the plan for my startup? is a great question, one I frequently receive.

Its importance jumped out at me this morning when I read the following note from Mercy Ships, a Christian sponsored non-profit organization that brings free medical services to the poor around the world, notable from ships docking along the coasts of Africa.

As a non-profit organization Mercy Ships is constantly seeking talented seafarers to
meet the demand for qualified crew in our ship. Our recruiters attend job fairs and recruitment venues looking for Deck and Engineer Officers, Able Sea-farers and Ratings, but the reality is there is a worldwide shortage of
qualified ships workers, and shipping companies who can pay big salaries are also looking for them as well.

In the article entitled The Next Agenda: The War to Develop Talent,
Jeff Schwartz offers a description of the current shortage of qualified
workers (talent) in the business world. He says: “The concern is not
about the availability of workers; it is, rather, about the shortage of
critical skills, experiences and specialized capabilities of leaders, managers, creators and producers required in changing industries.” For Schwartz the real issue is not a lack of workers, but a lack of workers with the necessary skills to succeed in a changing market place.

So you are not alone! Unfortunately.

The point for founders of startups is simple: Line up, recruit, entice your best people before you begin your startup. They will form your Core Team. They will do the bulk of the recruiting, so be sure they are able and experienced at finding, attracting and retaining the finest talent. You will need every sharp brain you can find if you are to deliver on your business plan.

You will be competing intensely with vast numbers of hiring organizations. We live in a global economy. Recruiting startup talent now routinely crosses borders to find talented people with passports, mobile phones, laptops, each confortable flying to whatever job sounds interesting. We live in the era of the most mobile labor force in history, even for startups.

Knowing how to find and keep the top, the best, people is a skill set eagerly sought in founders of startups financed by the best venture capital firms. They see you and your core team as a recruiting machine, able to at least double the number of great people each year added to your new enterprise, year after year. So if you are not yet at that level, start working on it. Get social, get in contact, get going, right now. Investors will pound on you about your recruiting abilities during your presentations.

Assemble a group of people to support your recruiting efforts. Find recruiters, contact them, get them thinking about your startup even before you have begun. Locate contract human resources experts who work with startups during the earliest stages. Add angels who have been there before, who know how challenging your first two years will be when you are seeking to add critical skilled talent to your startup. And start talking to other startup people, especially other founder CEOs. Listen to their stories and learn how to recruit to win.

BOTTOM LINE: People are what you need to build your startup. Top skills, great talent. So you have to build an organization of amazing people who can recruit and win against the world's most intense competition for talented people. When you respect the importance of this mandate, you'll add a key element to building your unfair advantage.

In very few words you must deliver something so compelling that when you are finished, they will say:

"Step off the elevator, tell me more, you have 3 minutes."

Now your challenge is to deliver the richer version that increases the person's interest so much that they say:

"Interesting. How about meeting me for an hour next Tuesday at 9:00 in the morning at my office?"

That opens the door to pitching your full story about your new adventure.

And it all began with the 30 second elevator pitch.

What makes an elevator pitch effective? Here are some tips from serial entrepreneurs:

Cleverness. It should describe something out of the ordinary, a business that smacks of large potential, a product/service that is instantly appealing.

Mystery. Selectively choose words that entice, trigger desire to hear more, like a mystery story that grabs and holds the attention of the reader from the first paragraph.

Boldness. Without childish bravado, be confident of your idea so your tone and demeanor deliver an impression of confidence and courage.

Facts. Include numbers, just a few, only ones that suggest the business has large potential and any that support your claim that this could be a game changer, so you leave an impression of large numbers on the left half of the brain.

Images. Pictures in the mind leave graphic impressions, so try to use a metaphor that conveys your idea and stamps a picture on the right half of the brain.

People. Describe your core team, why you are together and what makes each a standout for your business.

Why. Be sure to ask for the order, either the round of financing you are looking for, or the talented person you are hunting for.

There you have it, the key elements for an effective elevator pitch. Now try yours out, right now, without more practice. Then compare it to the above and start improving it.

BOTTOM LINE: Simple can be powerful. Elevator pitches can start an avalance. Short stories are very challenging to write well, so expect to do a lot of work before yours is in top form. Serial entrepreneurs respect that, it's one of their secrets to success. When you can prepare an elevator pitch as effective as theirs, you'll begin building your unfair advantage.

Monday, 15 October 2012

"Marketing is too complicated to be left to management people who have little experience in marketing and who don't understand its principles." wrote Al Ries.

Rated by Advertising Age as one of the Top Ten living legends of marketing, Ries's findings
and related implications in the book "War in the Boardroom" are spot on with a Big Deal Problem that confronts first-time entrepreneurs.

In a nutshell, startups lead by marketing-thinking, marketing-driven founders too often become quickly ensued in a battle with investors on the board of directors. Why? Because the investors think more like management, not like marketing, but insist they understand marketing and insist their marketing is superior to that of the founders'.

Also, hiring "managers" into your startup can become a similar source of unnecessary conflict. Leaders reporting to the startup CEO mainly come from great public corporations driven by great managers. When they join a new enterprise they find themselves up their ears in marketing and its complexities. Everyone is surrounded by marketing decisions, tasks and events. Unfortunately few managers have learned much about what makes startup marketing succeed or fail.

"Management deals in reality.""Marketing deals in perception."

Serial entrepreneurs agree with Ries and see the conflict all too often.

An example can make the point clearer: A startup's growth slows and people are gathered to decide what to do to boost revenue. Management's response is to grow more, get larger, spread out, expand the business. Marketing's response is to narrow the focus more. Why? So the brand can be built that stands for something. So the brand can isolate a single service the startup can dominate or an attribute it can own. Management leaps to cut costs. Marketing leaps to focus the customer's mind to perceive the startup's brand and identify it with a word or two.

BOTTOM LINE: Become ready to pick your people for their understanding of startup marketing rather than management. Sure, everyone needs people to manage people and execute a plan brilliantly. But the plan must be a marketing-driven plan, lead by people who understand marketing and its complexities. Great startups are lead by a company of leaders who understand that. It's your job to find those people, starting with your initial core team and extending it to investors and employees. They can have expertise in accounting, engineering, human relations, customer service and so on, you need such skills and experience, but you have to have a group of leaders near and at the top who respect marketing and let you lead as you perceive best. When you get that, you'll get a vital core concept that will keep you out of most of the wasted conflicts between marketing and management. Then you'll swiftly launch your new enterprise with the speed and efficiency needed to build an every more unfair advantage.

Tuesday, 09 October 2012

I'm often asked why there is so much conflict in the meetings of boards of directors of startups.

Watching board meetings erupt over the past decades has led me to a primary cause for most of the troubles at the top.

The main reason is not among often cited "obvious" reasons for board conflict (e.g. investors have different objectives than entrepreneurs, founder CEO is in over her head, competition is winning, running out of cash, etc.).

Brain Conflict

I think the central reason is due to how the different brains on the board think: the founder CEO and core team are driven by right brain decision-making while the investors are intensely left brain driven. The result is too often less than the best startup, and can even lead to its failure.

Big Corporations Suffer Similarly

This mix and related conflict are not confined to startups. The guru of consumer marketing, Al Riese, has found the same in large public corporations. His findings and related implications are discussed in detail in the book "War in the Boardroom". It is a quick read, packed with powerful marketing tips for company leaders wanting to become world-class and win big.

The board of directors of the typical early stage, venture-backed startup is made up of five members: two from management (founder CEO and a Vice President), two from investors (venture capitalists) and one independent. Small and quick, this mix is combined with monthly meetings and works well for new enterprises who must be fleet-footed and fast to change. Conceptually it is effective and powerful.

Conflict: Intuition Collides with Numbers

Founder entrepreneurs use a lot of intuition to make their decisions. Starting with an original idea, they move as fast as possible to push it forward, shaping it daily even hourly into something that grows and attracts more and more business. This speed, combined with entering a market that does not exist, leads to decisions that are based not mainly on statistics, rather they are made primarily at the gut-feel level. Bold and gutsy, inspiring and terriflying, those decisions result in the success or failure of the new enterprise.

The current wave of consumer-centric new enterprises (from Facebook to Instagram and Tweeter to apps and games for pad and phones) is lead by individuals trained to operate with a ton of intuition. Yet I've also witnessed similar intense intuitive decision-making in semiconductor and IT startups. Gut feel wins, often. Doubt that? Try asking people who worked with Steve Jobs and the Google co-founders.

In contrast, startup investors are mainly thinking left brained. The venture capitalist is most likely to come from an established company, often a public one whose stock is traded on Wall Street. Stockholders hold such boards responsible for getting the CEO to set expectations and meet financial goals (lots of numbers), quarter after quarter after quarter. That numbers-centric business culture is where the VC became famous, a hero, and eventually lead to his leaving to become a Partner in a venture capital firm. There he invested in a half dozen startups and joined their boards of directors, bringing with him the numbers-centric thinking that he used to become successful and famous.

The inherent conflict is obvious: When the founder CEO declares her right brained intention to boldly go "where no man has gone before," the left-brain set of board members goes ballistic. The ensuing fight is about the lacking numbers to support the gutsy move.

Exceptions are Great

People who learn how to find "the golden middle" (old German saying) win big. It took a lot of pain for Steve Jobs to finally figure that out, but when he did, the company that emerged became "awesome." There are other examples out there, and they make fine independent board members.

Investors who can do think intuitively have become icons. Examples include Don Valentine, venture capital pioneer and founder of Sequoia Capital. He hand picked the second wave of Sequoia investors, each of which I've seen demonstrate deep understanding of right brain thinking: Michael Moritz and Doug Leone.

Similar intitive thinkers can be found among the early employee numbered people who have left large startups such as Facebook before they went public to become active angel investors. Intuitive thinking investors are well worth hunting for.

BOTTOM LINE

If you assemble your board of directors with special attention to how each person makes decisions, your chances of success will get a big boost (and your long board meetings will be more pleasant, less filled with wasteful conflict). Right brain thinkers are especially valuable to founder CEOs, but are not common. Do your homework on investors, they all have money, but not all have the appreciation and ability to operate with fast moving, intuitive decision makers like you. When you have such people working for you (on the board), you will have added one of the most powerful elements of what it takes to build an unfair competitive advantage for a startup.

Tuesday, 02 October 2012

For my 70th birthday last week, I did a backpacking trip with two friends into a wilderness area where the trout seldom see humans. It was gorgeous. It turned out to be quite an Adventure!

Along the way I could see several profound lessons for entrepreneurs like you. Here are the highlights:

Expect the route to be twice as tough as you planned. This 2,500 foot mountain decent into a remote canyon was a lot more rugged than we anticipated. We were able to make it down and back, but it was arduous and a real trial. "We made it!" was our final remark at the top of the mountain.

Have adequate reserves. This Fall season lacked rain and the creeks along the way were dry. We planned our carried water but it was gone by the time we neared our first campsite along the river. That was not enough reserve to allow for any emergencies along the long, hot trail over 10 hours of sweating.

Expect to lose the trail at times. We got lost three times going in. We marked the trail better for getting out. The lose of time and energy was significant. It stretched our patience and endurance with each other.

Expect to find the trail again. We never lost hope of re-finding the lost trail. Time after time we stopped, dropped packs, spread out and found the missing trail (it is a seldom used path in rugged brush and mountain terrain).

Use multiple skills to make your way. Our map reading skills were solid, our compass worked, and the tiny GPS helped until batteries ran out. We did not rely on just one tool.

Go with people you trust. We knew each other. We had been on the trails before. We had experiences that together gave us confidence we could do this rugged journey.

Go light. One of our guys carried too much gear, too many duplicates and luxuries. His extra caution cost his legs dearly. He slowed us down. We had to help him, he could not carry the load he signed up for. He learned a tough lesson and won't do it a second time.

Do not hesitate to ask for help when you need it in emergencies. Our youngest and most experienced trekker insisted on having us two slower guys leave before him. Two hours later we were far ahead when he got hit hard by bad food poisoning. His resulting return to camp, vomiting with diarrhea left us over-nighting on the top of the mountain in storm winds, wondering what happened to him. The next morning we called for help from Search & Rescue. They found him four hours later, on the trail, and then assisted his climb out (he is a Marine) and he arrived safely later that day.

Stick to basic rules of safety. We violated a cardinal backpacking rule: Stick together. Separating cost us dearly in worry and endangered one of us.

Have your escape plan prepared. We had discussed what each of us would do along the way in case of emergency. This situation was one of several we were ready for. We followed our agreed plan and it resulted in the best of outcomes.

Treat every outing as an Adventure! That means each trek will have four elements: Unknowns, Risks, Treasures, and Fun. We had all of those on this trip. It was a true Adventure into one of God's most beautiful areas of creation. It left us wiser and ready for more, with our friendships intact and our bodies humbled. It was a great way to celebrate a birthday!

BOTTOM LINE: Lessons from challenging events such as wilderness backpacking (for fishing, hunting, skiing, etc.) offer lessons for real entrepreneurs. Making your outings Adventures and learning from them transform your time and effort into advancement of your character, skills and wisdom. When you can apply that to a new enterprise, you'll be far ahead of your competition who will complain about your unfair advantage.

Tuesday, 10 July 2012

Investors and top talented people know one when they see one: The game-changer new enterprise.

This term "game-changer" is special, a term referring to something of extraordinary valuable, a business worth taking time to ponder.

If you can morf (pivot, shift, alter, modify) your initial starttup idea into a game-changer, you have moved from a clever new enterprise to an awsome-filled startup.

GAME-CHANGER

Here are primary characteristics of a game-changer startup:

Revolutionary, not evolutionary. Game-changers are businesses that do things never done before. They are not doing something, better, quicker, faster, cheaper, nor are they entertaining or interesting. Semiconductor, microprocessor, PC, together they comprise one trail of revolution, a new enterprise leading each chapter, each chapter emblazoned with the name of a new category of product, each a fresh, giant market.

Hot not cool. When you understand what this thing is about, you are amazed! The exemplary words rush out in a cascade of wonder. You think "Wow! instead of just "cool." There were riots at the Beijing Apple store for the first (fill in the blank) product. Emails rocketed globally at the arrival of Twitter and Facebook.

Shifts -- not alters -- human behavior patterns. People stop doing something one way and begin doing it a different way. They cut the phone and television cables, forever. Blogs replace their newspapers, and the cascade goes on, spawning fresh companies by the hour in cities across the planet. A game-changer phenomena opens the door for millions of great, new enterprises.

Explodes, not grows. The first model is a hit as is every succeeding version. People can't wait to get their hands on the product family, the service, the thing. Online coupons led to Groupon's IPO in record time. Facebook leaped over pioneer MySpace, as did Apple's Phone over Blackberry and the others.

Creates new business models. They sell virtual goods, give things away to end users, and rent things instead of selling them (and do a lot more strange things). It's done because in combination with the other elements of their fresh business models they have figured out a wildly clever way of making new money. Guarantee a heavy construction piece of equipment will never breakdown due to lubricant maintenance failure (and make money selling the relate lubrication maintenance service). Rent movies via postal-service delivery priced at a flat per-dollar subscription price. Or rent software to industrial corporations.

Think boldly, not cautiously. The founders are confident because they see the game-changer vision. They have worked out how to get through the forbidding unknowns that stump other want-to-bes. They are confident, without bravado, it is common sense to them. To others, they are not understandable, are shocking.

They see things hard for others to see. This is good news and bad news. Bad news because it is very difficult for investors and talented people to "get it" and yet it so obvious to the founders. That makes it very frustrating when seeking money and people to get started. The good news is that other startups are not yet flooding the new space, the new category, so far "they don't get it."

BOTTOM LINE: Consider where your intial idea is today. Then ask yourself "What do we have to do to convert it into a game-changer?" Review each of the above elements. What can you alter to get up to the higher level needed to become a game-changer? It is worth the effort. It is easier to take a bit more time to get it right, rather than to have to radically change your business after you have gotten it started. Serial entrepreneurs work hard to create business plans that are game-changers. That's how they became serial entrepreneurs. When you can do that, you'll join the ranks of the great builders of startups founded on an unfair competitive advantage. So get going, you can do it!

Thursday, 24 May 2012

The last generation was dubbed "incubators". The lessons about them, from serial entrepreneurs, is worth thinking about before you choose to go that route for your first enterprise.

The current rush to try using a startup accelerator is well documented.Try reading about it in this Wall Street Journal report: "Start-Ups Crowd Accelerators".

So is an accelerator right for you?

Here are some things to ponder that serial entrepreneurs have learned about startup accelerators:

They sound great to first-time entrepreneurs. What could be better? Great people instantly welcome you, offer free advice and quick access to real cash. Compared with going it alone, living on your savings for months before getting real money from angels or venture capitalists, that is very attractive. Yet there are some sobering realities to ponder before leaping into an accelerator.

Their money is expensive. For $12,000 you would be charged 5% to 10% of your startup. That could be worth $2 million of you sell out later for, say $20 million. If you had kept that yourself, it would have gone to you, or you could have used it to attract needed employees.

The great helpers are busy doing other things. Helpers in accelerators are mostly people wishing they could join the next Facebook. Or they are in the business of selling services such as legal and accounting help. Few have the deep experience the first-timers is eagerly seeking. If you are willing to settle for that level of basic business assistance, then you'll find it at the accelerator. It can be helpful, but it is not from the amazingly talented people pool that you might be expecting to pick from.

The cash is a drop in the bucket. Your startup can not do much with $10 to $20 thousand of cash. Good technical people are able to find good jobs paying good salaries. Ditto with marketing and business development people. They are looking for full salaries that will use up your accelerator cash in one month.

You still have the heavy lifting to do. After your initial idea gets scrubbed, worked over, and modified, you still have the hard work to do yourself. It is up to you to execute your first idea and begin the process of transforming it into something very valuable to end users and customers. Your accelerator advisors will be busy with a dozen or so other startups. It is up to you to find the missing people, recruit them (with no money for salaries), and get them working for you. Same goes for developing the product/service, preparing the marketing and so on.

Other solutions can be free. Advisors and mentors are available who do not work in an accelerator. They include experienced people from the venture community: serial entrepreneurs, lawyers, angel investors, accountants, human resource recruiters, and venture capitalists. I've seen such people welcomed by first-timer entrepreneurs and seen them receive outstanding advice (and they get an offer to return for more) at no cost (stock or cash). Why? Because each knows what it is like to be a first-timer, is willing to contribute advice (as they sought in the beginning) and want to not miss a great idea for a great startup.

Other solutions can be more useful. Try considering some of these and compare them with an accelerator:

Early contact with angel investors often opens a link between first-timer and a very experienced business person. That can lead to a small seed round of financing, with more to follow.

Starting with an "advisory meeting" with a great venture capitalist can cement a relationship that leads to a business plan that wealthy private business people finance (often in large public corporations that the venture capitalist financed years earlier).

Classes in entreprenership can be found in nearly every school. Taught by experienced people, they cover the basics in depth of what you need to be successful. The cost of the courses are very low and rich in content. Some are online and self-paced.

And you can simply spend three months doing "informational interviews" with CEOs and core team members of startups. You'll be amazed at how much you learn listening to them over a cup of coffee or lunch. A few have written books.

The nice thing about all of these is that you have not spent any cash or given away any shares.

BOTTOM LINE: "What is my alternative?" is the first question a serial entrepreneur asks him or herself when thinking about doing the next startup. Accelerators have their place in the startup world, but are not the be-all for everyone. To move from idea to clever plan that has a chance to contruct an unfair competitive advantage you'll need a lot more help than can come from an accelerator. Serial entreprenurs know that. So try contacting a few and give your alternatives consideration as you plan your next step.

Monday, 07 May 2012

Every great startup -- the ones that become the Gorilla of their jungle -- have CEOs who are passionate about "company culture".

Company culture is so important to serial entrepreneurs that they would rather skip hiring a skilled person if that individual did not fit the company culture.

The startup veterans have learned life is too short to try to do a startup with a lot of people who fight the company culture day after day after day. Every Monday becomes a day to dread and Friday cannot come too soon.

So today I found a real example for you to think about from the Lessons Learned column in Business Investors Daily, Monday, April 30, 2012. A serial entrepreneur says it like it is, in this, his story:

EXAMPLE

A Tech Entrepreneur Hires People Who Fit The Culture

Entrepreneurs often dream of building a business and selling it for a fortune. Tony Hsieh lived the dream, but it didn't unfold as planned.

Within a year after graduating Harvard in 1995, he co-founded a Web advertising firm called LinkExchange. With Hsieh as chief executive, the startup grew quickly and attracted a large following. In 1998, Microsoft bought LinkExchange for $265 million.

"The real reason we sold the company, which most people don't know, is it was not a fun place to work anymore," said Hsieh, now chief executive of Zappos.com, an online retailer based in Henderson, Nev. "The company culture went downhill. I dreaded getting out of bed to go to my own company."

An early investor in Zappos.com, Hsieh joined the fledgling firm in 2000 as co-CEO. After nearly a decade of fast growth, Hsieh and his team sold the company to Amazon.com (AMZN) for about $1.2 billion.

Unlike his earlier experience selling LinkExchange, Hsieh pursued the Amazon deal with an eye toward preserving the vibrant culture that he and his colleagues had worked to create. The culture remains intact post-acquisition.

Reflecting on his LinkExchange experience, Hsieh admits that he overlooked the importance of fostering esprit de corps as the startup rapidly hit its stride. Managers recruited candidates with technical qualifications but who lacked the right "fun" personality.

"The culture was great at first when we hired friends and friends of friends," recalled Hsieh, author of "Delivering Happiness." "But once we exceeded 15 or 20 people and we had to hire people through resumes and interviews, things changed."

Newcomers didn't necessarily share the same attitudes as the core group who launched the company. Morale started to suffer.

"I should have been more careful about company culture and made sure everyone understood it can go away at the drop of a hat," Hsieh said. "It's easy to take for granted, but over time there's death by 1,000 paper cuts."

At Zappos.com, Hsieh vowed not to repeat his mistake. He says that maintaining the right culture "is the No. 1 priority of the company," and he hires people who embody the organization's values.

Candidates undergo two sets of interviews: one with a manager who assesses their technical prowess and one with a human-resources representative who evaluates cultural fit. Zappos.com has about 4,700 employees. In 2011, the firm hired approximately 1% of its 25,000 job applicants, Hsieh says.

"As long as we hire people whose personal values match our corporate values, you don't need to tell them how to behave," Hsieh added. "They can just be themselves."

BOTTOM LINE: Founder CEOs who want to build great startups will spend huge efforts to build great company cultures. Serial entrepreneurs make that one of their top priorities. They will not hire people who don't fit the company culture, regardless of how smart and talented the candidate is. When you live by that policy, your startup will grow with extra strength, speed and efficiency. Life will be worth living, not hellish. It is part of what makes serial entrepreneurs so successful, it is key to their building an unfair competitive advantage. Learn that and your startup will increase its likelihood of joining their successes.

Why don't you know about them? That's part of their story and it's a clever one, filled with excitement, risk and extraordinary success.

I highly recommend you read the well written story (just click on the Wayfair link above) in which the two founders, Niraj Shah and Steve Conine, tell how they moved from startup idea to startup idea until one day they found a very special idea for their new enterprise would become Mayfair. It simply "occurred to them".

As you dissect this amazing saga (it took years and a lot of hard work), keep the following characteristics in mind, they'll help you glean extra value from your thinking, they will generate things to apply to your own startup:

Stalled with several startups, bailed (wisely) one after the other, until they got The Big Idea.

Took no venture capital until success was very clear, years after starting.

Stayed focused, did not get distracted during early formation years.

Looked and looked and looked for a better idea than the one they had at the moment.

Techies made the move to marketing savvy as a natural consequence of their processing of ideas.

Settled on a very simple idea, yet one with huge potential.

Bold vision: "determined to think big -- really big."

Flanking Strategy: moved into uncontested territory, a new market not yet dominated by a Gorilla.

Profitable from Month One.

Quick to follow successful step after successful step (and to not repeat failures).

Creative with cash flow management.

Learned how to do the (retail merchandise) business by doing it.

Avoided attacking Gorillas.

Figured out what customers were frustrated with, solved that problem.

I'll leave the rest of the story thinking up to you. Read, think and repeat several times how you analyse this Wayfair story. Each reading offers to you the chance to glean a fine harvest of stimulating ideas for how to do a Spontaneous Startup.

BOTTOM LINE: Wayfair is a find example of how to do a Spontaneous Startup. You can do the same. Study the process the founders went through. That is where the low hanging fruit is waiting for you. When you "get it", you'll know the secrets that made serial entrepreneurs serial winners. And you'll be able to use your idea to build an unfair competitive advantage.